Using the Psychology of Working Theory as a guide, the goal of this study was to examine the longitudinal relations of economic deprivation to work volition and work volition to academic satisfaction among college students. We sampled 1508 students and surveyed them at three time points over a 6-month period. We found that economic deprivation…

The present study examined the degree to which a large group of incoming college students (N = 2,290) had experienced economic constraints and marginalization across their lifetimes, before starting college. Latent profile analysis (LPA) was used to identify groups of students whose lifetime experiences differed based on economic constraints and…

The present study examined the relation of career calling to life satisfaction among a diverse sample of 553 working adults, with a specific focus on the distinction between perceiving a calling (sensing a calling to a career) and living a calling (actualizing one's calling in one's current career). As hypothesized, the relation of perceiving a…

Many people desire work that is meaningful. However, research in this area has attracted diverse ideas about meaningful work (MW), accompanied by an equally disparate collection of ways of assessing MW. To further advance study in this area, the authors propose a multidimensional model of work as a subjectively meaningful experience consisting of…

The current study tested the hypothesis that experiencing a calling to a particular career would relate positively to work-related outcomes, and that these relations would be mediated by career commitment. Using a sample of 370 employees representing diverse occupations at a Western research university, results supported these hypotheses as…

The present study examined the relation of work volition to career decision self-efficacy (CDSE) and academic satisfaction in a diverse sample of 447 undergraduate college students. Work volition was found to be moderately correlated with academic satisfaction and strongly correlated with CDSE. Potential mediators and moderators in the link of…

Building on the Psychology of Working Framework, the current study explored the extent to which work volition functioned as a moderator in the relation between positive affect, core self-evaluations, perceived organizational support (POS), and work self-efficacy to job satisfaction. In a diverse sample of 206 employed adults, work volition was…

With a sample of 194 adults, approximately half of which were involuntarily unemployed, the present study explored (a) how calling related to core self-evaluations and life satisfaction, (b) whether core self-evaluations mediated the relation of calling to life satisfaction, and (c) how these relations differed for employed/voluntarily unemployed…

The present study examined the relation of calling and academic satisfaction with a diverse sample of 312 undergraduate students. The presence of a calling was moderately correlated with academic satisfaction, and a multiple mediation model was utilized to test three potential mediators to this relation: career decision self-efficacy, work hope,…

This study constructed an instrument measuring work volition for adult populations, defined as the perceived capacity to make occupational choices despite constraints. In Study 1, an exploratory factor analysis produced a 3-factor structure containing subscales assessing general volition, financial constraints, and structural constraints. The full…

The authors examined the degree to which 1st-year college students endorse a career calling and how levels of calling differ across demographic variables and religiousness, life meaning, and life satisfaction. Forty-four percent of students believed that having a career calling was mostly or totally true of them, and 28% responded to searching for…

Most people have positive views of their general happiness or subjective well-being (SWB). Furthermore, SWB tends to be stable and rebound to prior levels following events or circumstances that might be expected to change its level. The authors speculate about ways a theory of person-environment transactions--Holland's theory of vocational…